


Tears, Feathers, and Blood

by kayteedancer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:51:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3854776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayteedancer/pseuds/kayteedancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft did not make a habit of drinking alcohol.  He did not like how it dulled his senses and made his mind no better than the rest of the general public.  But tonight... tonight he made himself an exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears, Feathers, and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This is something I wrote post-Rechenbach but pre-season 3. I had a lot of feelings after Sherlock jumped and wondered how Mycroft would handle everything. Obviously this takes place in an alternate universe, one in which Sherlock didn't survive the jump or Mycroft remained unaware that Sherlock survived. I hope you enjoy!

_Daedalus cautioned his son repeatedly. "Remember all the trouble I had getting these feathers to stick?" he said for the sixth or seventh time. "The binding agent I resorted to is unstable," he pointed out as Icarus fidgeted impatiently. "I had to heat it to make it work. If it gets heated again - by the sun, say - it'll give way and the feathers will come loose. Do you understand, boy?"_

_To judge by Icarus's expression, he felt his father was belaboring the point. As it turned out, he might have given his old dad more credit for a caution worth repeating. For as soon as they had leapt from the windowsill and caught an updraft which bore them high into the sky about Mount Juktas, Icarus became giddy with exhilaration. Now he knew what a falcon felt like, dipping and soaring at will._

_Perhaps with some notion of going down in the annals of aviation with the first high-altitude record, he started flapping with a vengeance. And as he climbed into the thinner air aloft, the sun's proximity began to work as Daedalus had anticipated. The feathers came loose, and Icarus plunged headlong into the sea._

-"Daedalus" from the Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology

* * *

 

Mycroft did not make a habit of drinking alcohol.  He did not like how it dulled his senses and made his mind no better than the rest of the general public. But tonight, tonight he made himself an exception. As he sipped on his fourth tumbler of scotch in half an hour, he felt everything burring at the edges and watched as the minute details he and his brother thrived on noticing and deducing faded into darkness. Oh God, Sherlock…

All Mycroft wanted was for everything to fade to black, to not have to remember his brother's face as he called the army doctor. To not remember the army doctor's face as Sherlock stepped off the roof and plummeted towards the ground, a fate he could do nothing to stop.  Mycroft didn't want to remember anything anymore, especially not the sight of his brother diving from the roof of St. Bart's hospital. He drew a slightly shaking hand over his eyes as his brother's untimely demise replayed over and over on a loop, tattooed beneath his eyelids.

He felt tears springing to his eyes but forced them down brutally, finishing his nearly full scotch in one fell swoop, hoping his fifth scotch would strengthen his determination to not break down. (Was it his fifth? Or maybe his sixth? He had lost count as he continued to drain the amber liquid from its tumbler).  Mycroft couldn't help but feel responsible for his brother's demise. It was he that taught Sherlock to use that massive brain as a tool. It was he that taught him to never give up on a puzzle or mystery. It was he that gave him all the tools to fly so high that he danced among the media's starlight.

But it was also he that put Sherlock on Moriarty's radar, and he that gave Moriarty the information that made his Richard Brooke story credible. No matter how much Mycroft had warned his brother to stay away from Moriarty, to leave the Consulting Criminal alone and to allow Mycroft to handle it, Sherlock had never followed his directives. (He really shouldn’t have expected him to; Sherlock hasn’t followed his advice since Mycroft left him alone at school).  Whether it was his fault or that of his brother, Mycroft knew that he had put the two on a collision course, Moriarty a vengeful sun and Sherlock a very vulnerable Icarus.  And he made an ideal Daedalus, maker of mazes and scholar of flight, as he watched his brother plummet down, down, down until he crashed to the earth with blood in his hair and feathers fallen from his makeshift wings raining down around him, landing gently on his icy skin.

Or maybe they were just Mycroft’s own tears; feathers did not seem to make sense in real life. Tears didn't make sense either because he wasn't actually on scene when Sherlock jumped, but they seemed to fit perfectly in his memory. Mycroft thought that his confusion might be his seventh, or possibly eighth, scotch talking but he really couldn't muster up enough energy to give a flying fuck when it felt like his entire world had crashed and burned with his Icarus.


End file.
